204. Should we be thinking about kids in our 20s?

course break down the psychology of our twenties. Today, let's talk about something that I don't think I have ever spoken about on the podcast before, having kids. Having babies. Having children it might seem so far off for some of us and so adult, but for other people it is right around the corner. It is part of their

future two, five, ten year plan. And although I definitely think we've passed the days when we were kind of expected to have children by twenty two or twenty three, it is definitely something that a lot of us start considering in our twenties, whether children are part of our future, whether maybe we want to be younger parents, or whether we want to focus on our careers and wait. Regardless of your kind of preferences, regardless of what you want

to do in your life. I do think that talking about children as a possibility, thinking about their role in our future is something that we really do need to start thinking about during this decade, as adult and mature as it seems. You know, I'm twenty four at the moment, and I always, for the longest time, was convinced that I did not want kids. I didn't want a family

of my own. Especially when I was a teenager. I had these very huge, exaggerated fantasies of like being the archetype of the fun, drunk single art traveling around the world, like collecting I was gonna say trophies to collecting trinkets, you know, this whole fabulous vision. And people would always tell me that I would change my mind. I really resented that. I honestly still don't believe that everybody does

change their mind. But let me tell you something. I turned twenty three, and it was like suddenly I was sure, and I was sure that I wanted children, And it was like something had clicked in my brain that I wanted to be a mum, a mom someday, and it really startled me, and for the first time it really had me considering things like parenting, things like fertility, and it brought a new lens to my health and who

I was dating. And of course, when that happened, I'd turned to my friends about it because that is my main source of wisdom, and so many of them had experienced something similar. Some of my friends who had always been very firm in the decision that they did not want children, they remain firm. Others like me, had like

shifted entirely. And you know, it's like I turned twenty four and suddenly I've had more conversations about egg freezing than I have ever had before, and so many people are talking to me about fertility or starting to really care that their period is consistent, or about what they're eating and their health, and I want to talk about it. When do we really need to start thinking about kids? Do we need to start thinking about it in our twenties or at all? What are the factors that we

need to consider? What about when it comes to our romantic life, the pressure to find somebody, Is it all too adult too soon? And should we kind of preserve our youth for as long as possible? You know, there are so many questions that come up around this, and it's so easy to kind of just like put it off. I'm going to make the argument for why thinking about it is actually going to give you more, more freedom

and more choice than not thinking about it. And we also heard from a few listeners who have children who are expecting in their twenties about having you when they were ready and what we can learn from their experiences when it comes to family and future planning. So, without further ado, it's a much different episode today, but one that I am so excited about. Let's get into it. Having children is such a distinctively adult conversation, regardless of

where you are at in your twenties. It is still so shocking to hear from my friends in their late twenties or early thirties that they're expecting children, because it's kind of like you've heard a strange fork in the road, like an intersection of sorts where people's life paths split and children, and I think also, you know, marriage to

some extent, but that is where the split occurs. Some of us are still getting drunk on the weekends, some of us don't have a dollar in savings, but there are other people posting, you know, engagement announcements or getting IVF or going to obgyn appointments. Everyone's path is super different, but I think for many of us we are in a few minds when it comes to whether it's even you know, the time to consider whether kids are part of the plan, let alone start trying to have kids.

If we aren't sure, do we need to decide now or can we? You know, it kind of feels like even thinking about it pops the bubble a little bit. It pops the bubble of being carefree and young, because once you do start considering it, some really big things come up, you know, especially not just in terms of like do you want to start considering whether you should have kids now, it's even the question of like do I want to consider whether I want kids at all?

And when I might want to start. What comes up with that is questions around like ethics and climate change and recession and like the world that we would be bringing children into. And it's almost like once you are like, yeah, maybe I do want children, is that when you have to start making a plan. Is that when we kind of start to feel strapped to a timeline Because once we start thinking about kids, there is this acknowledgment that there is a bit of a to do list that

comes with that. You know, you have to find a suitable partner or most people would prefer to have a partner with them. To raise a child, you have to kind of get your finances sorted, get your life sorted, before a window closes. And for women, obviously that window

is our biological clock. And you know, typically I really hate that phrase because it very much connotes that like when the clock hits zero, we expire or we are past our worth, that we've run out of time, you know, as if our lives don't continue whether we have children or not. But that is what we know it colloquially. And we also know that there is like a deadline

for reproduction. Not to make it sound so clinical, but around you know, thirty to thirty five, our ability to have children declines and it continues on that kind of plane. It continues to decline before menopause. So knowing that does that change how we live our twenties, even if we don't want to start having kids to our thirties, knowing that it might.

career break easier. Like, there are a lot of pros, but there are also a lot of cons, right, the loss of freedom, the quick change in life trajectory compared to all of our friends. The money, that's a huge one,

the money. Children are so expensive, but also it's this capacity and this lifestyle that we would be giving up, so that I think is the thing that really contributes to the decision to have kids in our twenties, or to even consider it, because even if you do want to have kids eventually in your thirties, there is kind of an acknowledgment that there is a chapter that will

close when that decision is made. And of course there is a chapter for everything, but I think the chapter that you are in without children is one of immense freedom. It's being able to go out for drinks or out for dinner with your friends any night of the week. It's you know, coming home when you feel like it. It is having the freedom to travel where and when you would like it, is having the freedom to sleep in or you know, to just actually be in control

of your life. And there is a brief window where we truly get that after we turn eighteen to when we might you know, have kids. Obviously, if you don't end up having kids, you literally you win the lot or you get to have that freedom for the rest

of your life. Congratulations. But you know, if you want to have kids at some point, like you're likely going to want to start trying before you're like forty, So that's like twenty two years to get it all out of your system, to travel where you want, to do what you want. Like maybe Max, you might want to start trying early. You might not want to have like a geriatric pregnancy when you like, I'm obviously spiraling here.

But it's the case that when you start thinking about it, you start thinking about how much this decision might impact other areas of your life. It's not just around like, yeah, I want to have a baby, it's work decisions. Will you be able to have a career break. Do you want to climb the corporate ladder or not? It's travel plans do I want to Are the places that I wouldn't be able to go with kids that I want

to go? Now? Are there experiences that I want to have that I know are going to become more difficult? Like solo traveling? You obviously can't solo travel if you have a baby, because the baby's got to be there, big factor. And then dating, dating, do you like how

serious are you going to get how quickly? And I think that when you have this acknowledgment of like, Okay, no, eventually I do want kids, and I know that it might be easier to try like in my late twenties or my early thirties, it might put a lot more pressure on the people that you are romantically interested in. So I was speaking to a friend about this very

component the other day. And obviously we are, you know, in a day and age where it's not like a man and woman need to like get together at twenty two and have babies by twenty five otherwise like that's it, You're not going to reproduce. There are so many other options. There is IVF, there is adoption, there is sorrogacy, so many things, but you know, sometimes the dream is to have somebody to do it all with, to have a partner to help raise your child, especially a partner that

we love. That can feel so special, but it also ups the stakes if you haven't already kind of found that person and you're getting older, you're not just facing the stigma of a society that puts romantic love on a pedestal and pities singleness, but it's also really confronting to realize that the key to unlocking your life plan rests in a stranger that you're yet to meet. And it's kind of like, how do you rush something that

isn't always up to you? How do you tick this off your list to make it sound super super clinical? And I was speaking to a friend about that and how she is now in her kind of like early thirties, and how stressful it is that it's no longer just about finding a connection, because yes, of course that obviously is the most important thing, but it's also about making

sure that you're on the same page. She said to me, She was like, when I decided that yes, I did want kids, it wasn't about that I wanted kids in my twenties, I just wanted them. Eventually everything else became a lot more serious, and she was like, I realized that I'm getting to an age where I don't have the luxury of getting to know you, like I don't

have the luxury of like, let's figure it out. It was like, no, if I'm going to spend a year dating year, a couple of years, I want to know that we are on the same page about kids or about family, about values, and the timeline for things really shifts. Not that you are rushing it, hopefully you are not rushing it, but it's more that there is a directness and an intentionality, and it's more like you have to make calls about big things like kids earlier on and

make sure that you're on the same page. And when you're nineteen or twenty two, you know you kind of have time to have your doubts. You can date people that you probably don't think is going to be the one and it's not going to really hurt your long term chances of creating the dream life with the kids

or without the kids. You can have those kind of fairy tale conversations about the future without needing to enact plans right away, but that changes the order you get and it definitely is probably going to give you a fairly large dose of milestone anxiety if you kind of wake up to the conclusion that children are part of your life plan and that part of getting there is

finding somebody and you haven't done that yet. And the reason I say milestone anxiety specifically is because that really derives from a sense that you are not where you want to be in life or where you should be. It can still feel like there is this like key ingredient that you are missing. And although milestone anxiety is typically applied to things like Korea or financial goals, when it does come to relationships, I think it's a lot more complicated because it's not like there is a formula

for success or a correlation between effort and output. It is so influenced by things like chance and timing and if you believe in it, fate. So I think it's really hard to not feel in control of something so significant for the life you dream of. And even when I think everything goes according to plan right, even if you are, you know you've assessed your emotional preparedness, you've assessed your financial preparedness, your social preparedness, the strength of

your relationship. You are in a relationship, you're both ready to have kids, you know, and you've been like, yeah, to start in my twenties. I mean, this is what I want. I want to be a younger parent. This is just what feels right for me. Sometimes it doesn't always work out the way that we want it. You can be absolutely sure of your decision, and life can

still throw you curveballs. And a big one that I think a lot of us in our early twenties in particular don't think about, is fertility, not just like the biological clock, but also kind of whether we're able to even have kids, the state of all those other systems. This is just not something that we think about when we are twenty or twenty one. But the older you get, you start to hear stories. One of the stories was something that it's not a story, it's somebody's, you know,

lived experience. The experiences of a friend of mine who I think really woke me up to this. A couple

of years ago. She started having like these really weird symptoms and problems with like her period and with other things, and she went to the doctor, and I'm not going to disclose exactly what she had what happened, but basically they said to her that her chances of having like a natural pregnancy were incredibly low, and that if she and her partner wanted to have kids, they had to kind of start trying before she was like twenty eight twenty nine, Like she had to kind of get a

wriggle on. That was essentially what the doctor suggested. This was such a wake up call for her and for I would say the people around her as well, where we were kind of all in this like bubble of like, yeah, let's just like fuck around and find out like we're having fun. We're focused on like graduating UNI and like yay,

like dating around and like partying. And then it was suddenly like, oh wait, I actually, you know, I think about my future only as my career, and I think about my future only it's like oh, meeting the love of my life and like getting ahead and like buying a house. But it's like no, and there is a part of this that is happening right now, my fertility, that I hadn't even considered. And it really raised the question of is it better to be prepared now or

to live in blissful ignorance. Is it worth bursting the bubble of not knowing and almost immediately fast forwarding your timeline if you do find out the news that she found out, which is that it might actually end up being really hard if she doesn't start now. Or is it just like better to just get to that problem

when you get to it. Here's the thing. If you've always known that you want to be a parent, and that is a huge facet of your identity and your goals and your future, I do think that it's worth just knowing in your twenties if that is something that is possible for you, even if you don't feel responsible yet. Knowledge is power, especially as all the science starts to improve.

There was this episode of New Girl that I watched a while back in which like if you've watched a New Girl, like CEC goes in and like Jess and CC the go in and they assess like their ability to have children, and it's like meant to be this fun thing, you know, like oh like goofy guga, Like you know when you like take a pregnancy test and like you know it's gonna be negative and you know you see those moviees where ends up positive like it

was just meant to be. It's very much like that meant to be, like a funny thing, and cec it turns out like has very poor fertility and is like really Una will be unable to like conceive naturally. And in that scene she kind of talks about wishing that she had a magical wand to like go back to early twenties and like tell herself, like be a little

bit more serious. So even if it does seem weird to be thinking about it now, and even if it does seem pretty intense intense, I think, especially if you're a woman, see you know, see this this questioning around your fertility and your future capacity or desire to have children as an investment in your health, the same way that you want to live a long, healthy life, the same way that you want to have a really successful career, And so you are making investments in that right now.

If you do want kids, it's important to be thinking about it sooner rather than later. And I think what I began to realize was that the pressure doesn't increase, but is reduced by being able to make future decisions with full information that might actually derive from a decision that you make right now. That is kind of like the appeal of egg phrasing, right, Like, I've been reading

so much stuff about egg phrasing recently. The premise is that you kind of store your good DNA from when you're like in your early mid thirty twenties, sorry for like later, when you're in like your thirties or maybe even your forties, so that it's kind of like insurance

you have time you can delay the inevitable. It brings control back into the situation, even if, like you end up not using those eggs, even if like it's not something that you end up deciding to actually know, like I don't want kids, like the climate crisis is too terrible. I just never met the right person, Like I'm happy without them. It is the sense that, like, the decisions you make now give you the freedom in the future.

It's like science has allowed us to control something we were never able to control before, which is time and biology. So that is kind of my argument for why I think it's important to firstly consider whether you even want kids in your twenties and not in your twenties, Like in your twenties, consider whether you want kids in the future.

That's probably a better way to put it, because the decisions that you make around your health and your fertility now it might actually come back to help you when you do decide in your thirties or forties, and if you don't want kids, like great, then you can, you know, start making a plan to live your life more the

way that you want it to. And I think the other component is, like, it's also important to think about whether you do want to have kids in your twenties right, whether like this is a better time, whether you like my friend's example, the knowledge that maybe it will get harder as you get as you age, and the older that you get, it's better to start in this moment.

So I also wanted to hear from you guys, people who chose to have kids in their twenties, what they would want us to know, whether you're just considering, whether you're decided, or you're acting on it, stay with us for more after the break. There is obviously a perspective to this that I can't bring I don't have kids in as much as you know, I was speaking about this weird maternal urge that suddenly popped up out of nowhere in the last year. I really don't plan on

it for the next like five to ten years. But I wanted to hear from people who have thought about it a lot, especially people in their twenties who have decided to have children, perhaps earlier than what most of us would expect in this day and age, or people who have had to make big decisions about fertility in their twenties that feel really adult and feel like they are something that should have you know, that they could

have delayed but then couldn't. So I saw this actually really funny article before I read this first thing that having children in your twenties is now like punk, which is so funny, and that's kind of like, you know what I do. I kind of get it, because yet again, when I hear about people having kids in their twenties, it's not that I feel any certain way about it. I'm just like, oh, that's different, when actually it's not. Really it's not. So I do want to hear about it.

I do want to hear from people about it, about their decision, their timeline when they started thinking about things, and their fears. So here's the first person that messaged us, and I really love her perspective. I always knew I wanted to be a parent, and had my baby girl at twenty three. I faced a lot of stigma. She was an accident. Oh my god, sidebar, Why would you

ever say that to somebody? That is so freaking rude. Anyhow, back to this person, I was facing me that she was an accident, when actually I'd been together with my now husband since we were eighteen and it was part of our plan. I still lost friends who didn't get it and had people judge me. But she is now five, and I like knowing that she will be twenty when I'm forty three, and I could be a young parent

as she grows up and keep up with her. See that is the kind of perspective that I think we don't hear too often, people who you know had kids young, and how that is actually like a really valuable thing for them. I think a lot of the time, and I will speak for myself here, you see people who have had children young and you're like, well, that's a bit different, and you think about what they might be

missing out, because that wouldn't be your choice. But as this person said, like, no she didn't Yes, she may have missed out in the sense that she lost friends that sound like they were never really her friends, but she gained so much. And I think when you were clear that is going to be part of your plan, and when you have really considered it and thought about it, you can actually choose when it's going to work best

for you. And for her, it sounded like when she was younger, that was really what was aligned with how she wanted to raise her child, and she's doing it. So I really liked that input. I thought that was really a perspective, a side of things that we don't always hear. Here is another person who wrote in I found out that I had half a uterus when I was twenty one, and that just put everything into perspective

then and there. It felt like I aged out of my friend group immediately, and no one could understand how my life felt different, because suddenly I was thinking about decisions they didn't have to make for years. Well that was three years ago. I still don't have a partner, but I feel more at peace with the fact that I'll be okay if it doesn't work out because I had time and more time to consider whether this was

even for me. I'm glad I got to be okay with what could happen and not be really excited about it when I was thirty and married, then find out the hard way. Yes, it was hard, but now I know more about my values and priorities than I did before I found out about my uterus. Why didn't I say it like that, my uterus? Thank you? Thank you for sharing. It really comes back to that point. You know, kids aren't everything. At the end of the day. You

don't need to reproduce to have a purpose. But maybe to paraphrase what you're saying, it seems like at the end of the day, it's about having choice. That's what feels meaningful here. And choice also comes from knowledge and knowing more in your twenties, even if it might up the stakes, actually lets you have time to consider things and to consider what you want in long term and the alternatives to that ultimate choice. Let's hear from one

more person. Hi, I am so glad that you were talking about this, because I feel like it is so weird amongst my group when I bring this up. People want to stay young. Thinking about kids feels old. I made the decision to freeze my eggs through work because I am twenty eight. I have a boyfriend slash life partner, but we haven't decided whether we want to have children yet, although we have definitely thought about it. Egg freezing just

took the stress away and work paid for it. For people thinking about it, it does put a lot of strain on your body and it's costly. So know that. Going in, some part of me thought that if I went through that, I must know that I want kids, because otherwise why would I do it. Yes, it is important to think about kids in your twenties as a hypothetical, but I want to stress that you do not. I want to stress that you do have more time than you think. My mom had me at thirty eight, back

then she was so old. She told me she was never worried about it though, because she loved her life and she would have had a full and wonderful life whether I came around or not. And I love that philosophy. It is a big decision, but you can wait until you're thirty eight or older and still be successful. Okay, Sorry, I feel like I really fell over my words there. I really love this point and I think this is a really good one to end on though, because it

brings some nuance. As this person said, you know, she still made a huge decision about her fertility and she didn't know. But you do have time. Kids aren't everything.

You can change your mind. You can start late. And I think it's a good way to finish us up is to really articulate and express that science is coming a long way, like this episode was not to sit down and stress us all out about you know, go and get a scan right now, Go and find out if you can have kids, like start on your family planning journey as young as possible, because that does sound

very like the Handmaid's Tale. I understand it. But I think that the whole philosophy that underlies this whole episode is that more information equals more choice. And if we think about retirement in our twenties, if you think about our dream jobs in our twenties, if we think about finding the love of our life in our twenties, all these big things, right, we should you know, all these big things that are the ingredients for our life plan and are the ingredients for our five and ten year plan.

We should also be thinking about children, and if you don't want them, that is honestly so, like I don't feel like I need to say that, but yes, to stress it all more time. If you don't want them, great, like you come to that decision, You come to that conclusion, and yes you can change your mind. But it's also like, if you do want kids, there are factors that are important to consider during this decade, whether that is your dating choices, whether that is your health that we have

more power by thinking about earlier. So I do hope that this episode has made you think or has just been entertaining, has helped you learn something. Thank you so much to the people who wrote in with their perspectives and their life experience. It was just something really that I've been thinking about a lot and I was interested to talk about. I would love to hear what you guys think. If you have a story, if you have an opinion, something else that you want to say, please

dm me on Instagram at that Psychology podcast. I would love to hear from you. And if there's somebody else you think would be interested in this episode who wants to hear it, please feel free to send it to them. Make sure you leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're listening right now and that you're following along for future episodes, And until next time, stay safe, be kind, and be gentle to yourself, and we'll talk soon.